Abstract [en]

The increased involvement of animals in digital technology and user-computer research opens up for new possibilities and forms of interaction. It also suggests that the emerging field of Animal–Computer Interaction (ACI) needs to reconsider what should be counted as interaction. The most common already established forms of interaction are direct and dyadic, and limited to domesticated animals such as working dogs and pets. Drawing on an ethnography of the use of mobile proximity sensor cameras in ordinary wild boar hunting we emphasize a more complex, diffuse, and not directly observable form of interaction, which involves wild animals in a technological and naturalistic setting. Investigating human and boar activities related to the use of these cameras in the light of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Goffman's notion of strategic interaction reveals a gamelike interaction that is prolonged, networked and heterogeneous, in which members of each species is opposed the other in a mutual assessment acted out through a set of strategies and counter-strategies. We stress the role of theory for the field of ACI and how conceptualizations of interaction can be used to excite the imagination and be generative for design. Seeing interaction as strategies and acknowledging the existence of complex interdependencies could potentially inspire the design of more indirect and non-dyadic interactions where a priori simplifications of design challenges as either human or animal can be avoided.

Aspling, Fredrik

Abstract [en]

Non-human animals have had a long co-existence and relationship with human culture and society, and we interact with them in a number of ways, and for various reasons. Their involvement in technology can be traced back more than half a century, initially restricted to scientific contexts, for example, for the study of animal behavior, cognition, or language learning abilities. The advancement and growing ubiquity of technology has extended their interactions with technology beyond scientific settings to other domains and everyday contexts, and for a broader set of reasons. This development is also driven by the emerging research area of animal-computer interaction (ACI), in which scholars of human-computer interaction (HCI) are starting to explore the possibilities of designing interactive technology for and with animals. This requires engagement with the difficult task of understanding this new set of actors and the types of interactions and functionality they possibly would like to have with computing. This is a challenge even when it comes to humans, but the challenge escalates when considering other animals, and presents even more challenges. Animals live different lives to us, and include a broad and diverse category of species, with different ways of experiencing and being in the world, and we have difficulty understanding each other due to these interspecies differences. The shift from human to animal interaction is far from straightforward.

This new and embryonic situation contests traditional notions of what a “user” is and can be, and how both digital technologies and other species, are being used. Consequently, it also challenges previous theoretical foundations and methods for understanding and designing user-computer interactions. The latter has received special attention, where user-centered design approaches and methods from the field of HCI and interaction design (IxD) has become a natural point of departure. As a complement, ACI needs a bolder and more creative way of progressing when it comes to building a theoretical framework to account for these new forms of interaction. There is a need to extend our thinking and the conventional ways of doing research and design, and to preserve curiosity and theoretical and methodological openness. As an alternative to many other design approaches, this thesis advocates the theoretical investigation of the “I” in ACI, aiming to extend the conventional notion of how interaction is conceptualized, a topic that has suffered from negligence. Drawing on ethnomethodological and ethnographic fieldwork – covering a maximum variation of extreme and deviant of cases – this thesis investigates the boundaries of the field and different theoretical perspectives and empirical insights, in order to increase our understanding of the emerging dynamics of multispecies-computer interactions, and also how these insights can excite the imagination and generate topics for zoocentric design and computing.